Top Dems say military draft won't be revived

House speaker doesn't support congressman's bid to introduce bill

WASHINGTON — The new Democratic-controlled Congress will not seriously consider reinstating the draft, even if concerns about the military's strength and resiliency grow, party leaders said Monday.

Key Democrats, including the incoming House speaker, House majority leader and chairmen of the House and Senate armed services committees, said they do not support a resumption of the draft. They predicted that the idea will gather little momentum in the 110th Congress, which convenes in January. Pentagon officials also restated their opposition to a draft.

Their comments came a day after Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who will chair the Ways and Means Committee, said he would again introduce a bill calling for a return to the draft, suspended since 1973.

Rangel's previous bids to reinstate the draft have stirred little interest in Congress but considerable agitation among some bloggers and talk radio hosts who suggested the public was about to be blindsided. Monday, congressional leaders tried to allay such fears, saying the 2007-08 legislative agenda will not include a resumption of the draft.

"Mr. Rangel will be very busy with his work on the Ways and Means Committee, whose jurisdiction is quite a different jurisdiction," Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told reporters. Ways and Means handles tax matters, not military legislation.

Rangel, a Korean War veteran, said a draft would bring more upper-middle-class Americans into the military and would force policymakers to evaluate war-making more carefully. But a recent Heritage Foundation study found that the all-volunteer military has a fairly good distribution of people from all family income and education levels.

"No evidence supports arguments for reinstating the draft or altering recruiting policies to achieve more equitable representation," wrote Tim Kane, director of the foundation's Center for International Trade and Economics.